Example: Traffic Speed. Everyone always exceed the speed limit on highways. Why do we still have the limit? Like, either enforce it, or remove it. This stuff doesn’t make sense at all.
Because it can be enforced selectively, and if everyone is guilty of something, anyone in particular can be harassed under the cover of a legal justification.
Yep. And in some places, one can see the enforcement is against minoritites and other scape goats at a disproportionate level. This also has the “bonus” of being able to make one group look like they break the law much more often and are dangerous
Aside from selective enforcement, some laws (like traffic laws) are there for your protection AND to establish liability if something goes wrong.
If the government sets the limit at 30 and everyone goes 50, when an incident occurs, nobody can sue the city for bad roads because everyone was going faster than the intended speed.
Also establishes expectations. Every on the highway knows what the expected speed is. Going 30 in a 65 is way more dangerous than doing 75 when conditions allow.
But doing 55 in a 65 isn’t unreasonable, and 95 is pretty fast and at that speed handling can become difficult on cheap or poorly maintained cars.
There are also conditions where 30 is what you’ll do on a highway if its a blizzard and you’re stuck behind a plow truck.
You are referring to the basic speed law…
Drive as fast as the road conditions allow or some shit.
They exist just in case they need to crack down on you.
I always think of dog leash laws this way. In many places they aren’t enforced and the majority of dog owners let their dogs off leash. However, if the owner loses control of their dog and it gets into trouble, like biting someone or another dog, then the law can always say, you’re liable because your dog was supposed to be on leash.
I think the same goes for speeding and other laws. It basically puts liability on the lawbreaker if they take a certain risk. If nothing bad happens, fine. But, if something does, then it’s your fault.
This has the unintended consequence of people not knowing about the law if it goes unenforced for a long time.
Not knowing the law isn’t an excuse before the law in most circumstances.
Which makes this an issue since no one will go read the whole list of laws
Name every law.
When minor things are against the rules which are selectively enforced, it means the authorities get to pick and choose who to punish based on whatever criteria they feel like, which gives them power.
Which shines some light on how the black population (at least here in the US) gets charged with disproportionately more crimes.
It’s very effective in keeping slavery via our private prison system running
You seem to be assuming that people would keep driving as they currently do if we removed speed limits entirely. I’d be willing to bet that this is not the case. Most drivers have a number in mind on how much they’re willing to exceed the speed limit. For me that is 5 - 10kph, so if the limit is 60kph, then you’re not going to catch me going 80. Without speed limits I probably would.
So why do we have such laws? Because they work. Not perfectly but to some extent.
It’s so the police always have something they can stop you for.
So you can selectively punish.
This sounds like a distinctly cultural problem where the word ‘limit’ clearly doesn’t mean very much to the population in question.
It’s a limit, not a target, and certainly not a floor as some USAsians seem to treat it.
Here in Australia you can be fined for exceeding the limit by less than 10km/h. Yes, even if you are 1km/h over, and whilst this would probably get thrown out in court you’d still have to take time off to attend court.
It’s a limit, not a target, and certainly not a floor
It depends what it is. In some nations limits are reasonable and therefore obeyed while in others they are way too low and therefore commonly ignored.
Too strict laws like this lead to people disregarding it. Even worse, it may even lead to other sections of the same subject law being disregarded, because if it is commonly acknowledged that one section of specific law is ridiculous, why not the others.
Here we have a blanket 3km/h tolerance so they measure you, take 3km/h off and then use that to see which bracket of speeding you fall into (10, 20, etc).
It honestly frustrates me so much with the speed limit thing. On a societal level, speed (and differences in speed) tend to be one of the biggest factors in car crashes, so ignoring speeding is just accepting more dangerous roads.
On a peronal level, i try to do the limit or maybe 5-10 over (20 over is the norm in my area, even in school zones). The really frustrating part is as soon as i act like everyone else a try to do 20 over i get a ticket and my insurance goes up. This is frustrating becauae it just feels as if I’m being punished for doing what most people consider to be “safe” and normal. If it was drastically obvious that 20 over is faster than the flow of the traffic, it would feel a lot less frustrating if i get a ticket.
It can actually feel dangerous doing the limit on roads notoriois for 20-30 over. People agressively pass, tailgate and cut you off. Its fucked up but you get more dirty looks for doing the limit than you do for doing 40 over the limit. I think part of this is the north american attitude of cars being an extension of yourself. Someone doing 40 over is both couragous enough to go that fast, and also wealthy enough to own something faster and wealthy enough to afford the ticket, or at least that seems like the trend.
expected … traffic speed
You’re not supposed to be speeding you know?
I’ll never forget my first time driving in Southern California.
I was doing 85mph in a 70mph zone and a prius flew past me.
Where I live, if you’re driving the speed limit on the highway, you’d best be in the slow lane…and you’d still have people passing you.
You should be in the slow lane I’d you aren’t overtaking anyway right? I presume most places have fairly similar rules but here in Australia it’s keep left unless overtaking, always. I guess keep right unless overtaking for US.
Yeah, but we’ve got like 4 lanes in a single direction sometimes, so there’s not just a slow lane and a passing lane.
Guess what, all three extra lanes are still passing lanes. This misunderstanding is the biggest cause of traffic.
Call them what you want, it means that the majority of the people on the highway are “speeding” at any given time
Tell that to like 99% of drivers on the Interstate-95 around the PA-NJ Turnpike section (USA btw).
Bwahahaha!
What is a speed limit on highways?
Confused greetings from Germany.
Speed limits are somewhat enforced in Germany. Just because you can floor it at times does not mean you can go 100 in a 50.
They are enforced, of course, but there are large sections of highway with no speed limit.
I know it is old, but… : 😁
https://www.topspeed.com/cars/car-news/animal-caught-speeding-on-a-german-highway/
Freie Fahrt für freie Bürger
- ADAC 1974
You’re not expected to break them. For your example, you’re not supposed to go over the speed limit. And it is, in fact, extremely easy to do so. Most people are fine with it. And, no, it’s not impossible to do so. There is nothing forcing you to go faster for little to no gain and increased risk for you and other.
You expecting to go over tells something about you.
Practically no one actually drives at or below the speed limit in the US, especially on freeways. Whether or not you personally like this doesn’t matter – it’s just how it is.
You’re welcome to try it, but speeding is so pervasive in our culture that this will single you out and Ruggedly Individualistic Americans will get frothingly butthurt at you over it. Prepare to get tailgated, cut off, bullied out of your lane, stuff thrown at your car, etc.
It’s not just a matter of others getting butthurt. It’s actively dangerous to be driving at a different speed from the rest of traffic, regardless of whether you’re going faster or slower.
It sounds like you’re proud of your culture of not giving a crap about rules set to improve safety for everyone. On that account, I agree that we’ll never see eye to eye about this.
What part of what I wrote expressed that I was “proud” of it?
I’m just telling you how people behave. I don’t have any control over anybody but myself. For what it’s worth, I’m probably one of the six people in this damn country who doesn’t drive like a nut.
I remember a young college aged guy got shot in the head for beeping his horn at someone. Happened a few years sgo.
You expecting to go over tells something about you.
I don’t drive, but every time I’m in my parent’s car, they drive the speed limit, then I see cars flying by on the highway, and I’m like wtf.
I double check the spedometer, it points at just below 60, the sign says speed limit is 60. How is everyone going so fast. They must be speeding.
Not just one or 2 cars. Like almost every car.
Edit: This is in the USA, the Interstate-95 / PA-NJ Turnpike btw.
Textbook case of a cognitive bias. If you’re going the speed limit, every car that passes you is speeding. You don’t see all the other cars doing the speed limit.
For what it’s worth, the I-95 corridor from about Richmond to Boston, particularly the DC-Balitmore-Philly-NYC part, is probably one of the worst stretches of highway in the country for generalized insanity and phenomenally poor driving skills on display from everyone involved. It is easily my most hated patch of asphalt in the universe.
A small but measurable improvement would be made to the world instantly if every person in DC and Baltimore had their licenses revoked. Although if experience is any judge, that still wouldn’t prevent any of them from still all being on 95, three inches from the car in front and raging over “only” being able to do 80 in a 55.
Because you don’t see the cars going the same speed as you. If everyone on the interstate was going 60 you would only ever see the 10 cars near you. But 10 people going 70 could pass 100 cars. Each of those drivers would see 10 cars going 60 and 10 cars going 70. Despite the fact that less than 10% of the cars were speeding.
In general speed limits are enforced IMO, just within a certain level. IE yes everyone exceeds the speed limit… but typically by set amounts. IE I know myself I generally go 9 over the speed limit. I expect to get a ticket if I go 11-20 over the speed limit.
That being said, yeah the social construct is probably intentionally encouraged by cops, so that say when they are pulling over random minorities for an excuse to search the car, they have an automatic excuse for why they pulled them over.
People exceed the speed limit on highways, but usually not by a lot. If they exceed it by a lot, it is usually enforced, e.g. by speed cameras; but of course some people still sometimes get away with it, no enforcement of any law is perfect.
People do enforce the law. Just occasionally, but that’s enough to scare 90% into submission
Bureaucracy is a nightmare. There’s national laws, local laws, technical laws, practical laws, petty laws, incompetent laws, minority laws, old laws nobody bothered to get rid of, potential laws for possible situations that might happen at some point in an imaginary future… and so on.
Basically, it depends on who writes the law and why. All laws are subjective to humans, by humans and against anything that annoys the specific humans in charge at any given point in time.
